Using AHRQ's Health Care Innovations Exchange to Take on the Challenges of Care Delivery

Using AHRQ's Health Care Innovations Exchange to Take on the Challenges of Care Delivery

Event Date:

Thursday, May 1, 2008

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality conducted a Webinar to introduce the Health Care Innovations Exchange to its new users and highlight a few examples of the many innovations described on the site.

The Webinar walks you through the features of the site and explains the ways in which users can learn about innovation and participate in the Innovations Exchange.

Participants

Presenters:

Overview of Innovations Exchange - Carolyn M. Clancy MD, Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Diagram shows that the objective is to be useful to everyone, provide a way both to share ideas and find them. AHRQ's Innovation Exchange is an information hub for health care providers, government, health plans, other change agents, funders, provider associations, and researchers.

The home page is designed to achieve two goals: – to let users immediately see what's new on the site (updated every two weeks with new innovations and new QualityTools) – to enable users to dive right into find whatever they need – that is, to browse the site using specified terms or search using their own terms.

Long Description: Note that Innovations Exchange is not limited to innovations, but incorporates the QualityTools that used to be a separate AHRQ product. There are similar options for searching and browsing the large database of tools – or just seeing what's new.

An illustration of the list you just provided. Note that users are seeing only what currently exists in our database. None of these terms will get you “0 ” results (although you may find only QualityTools, or only innovations).

You can comment on the innovation itself, or reply to comments submitted earlier by others. Some innovations are also accompanied by a commentary by an expert in the issue that the innovation addresses. Users are welcome to comment on the commentary as well.

Beyond browsing and searching, we offer a way to find all innovations posted to the site from a link provided on the home page, beneath the publication issue announcement. The total number of innovation profiles (successes) is provided (currently 108) and quick access to all innovation attempts is available. Note that you can limit the number to those posed to the site in a particular month and year.

We currently only have 4 attempts in the Innovations Exchange. We seek many more and hope that you'll submit your innovative attempts to change care delivery. Others will benefit. Today, we are fortunate to have Michael Leu, an attempt submitter, speak to you about his attempt and, perhaps more importantly, why he felt it was important to participate.

We've set up the “Learn & Network” section of the site to provide users with alternative ways of learning and interacting. In the “Learn” box, you see a number of written pieces on a variety of topic, most authored by experts in innovation. We expect to add to this library every other month. In the “Participate” box, you'll be able to see upcoming and archived events – which are likely to include Webinars, brief lectures (probably in the form of podcasts), and discussion groups centered around specific innovations. In the “Network” box, you'll see a list of ongoing learning networks, where members can work collaboratively to tackle a shared concern. We've started up one so far on coordinating care at the community level, and plan to add more over time as we get a better feel for what interests users of the site. (The next slide says the same thing; could cut one of these.)

The learning network page of the Learning and Networking section identifies the active learning networks and an invitation for you to share your ideas for new learning networks. We have one active learning network at this time; Mark Redding, one of our speakers today will be highlighting his experience thus far with that learning network. We have many ideas for future learning networks and have an open invitation to you for additional ideas. What topics regarding innovation in health care delivery would you like to collaborate with others on and work toward a goal? Send us your idea; we're developing a systematic process for making informed selections.

Every birth certificate from the last 10 years in Richland County, OH was plotted out on a plot map and it was found that two of the census tracks actually had low birth rates lower than 24%. We hired, we went right to the most impoverished census tracts, identified women, primarily from churches, directly from part of the community, trained them with college credit, fully integrating them into the medical home where they would be supervised by nurses and physicians. And they reached out to their neighbors within that community, especially those most at risk, the homeless, those in the most impoverished housing complexes and connected them to care.

A pathway gives the specific benchmarks and care coordination that are critical. The first step essentially identifies that the woman is from an at-risk census track, the next step education, the next step barriers. The next step is a very important step to us, confirms they connect to care, that they have overcome those barriers of language, transportation, culture, fear of the doctor's office and they've connected. And the final is to measure the final outcome.

Summary: The reduction that was demonstrated within the enroll population for low birth weight. We went with a population with low birth rate great than 20 and our initial population 20 and over we stayed at less than 5% for over three years. Chart title: LBW Rate For Mansfield CHAP Participants 1999-2004 LBW Rate: 1999 was 20; 2000 was 15.4; 2001 was 11.5; 2002 was 7.8; 2003 was 0; 2004 was 5.5

The chart demonstrates that across the community people could be connected to care without duplication and with the financing and dollars focused on results. 2005-2006 – and forward 19 >> 146 At Risk Connected to care without duplication No. of Pregnancy Pathways in calendar year 2005-06: Jul-Sep 26, Oct-Dec 18, Jan-Mar 47, Apr-Jun 55